Michael Epps Utley {kind=image/jpg}
Generating business-to-business (B2B) leads online can seem challenging if you aren’t familiar with the fundamentals of lead generation.
The good news is that you can become a B2B lead expert by following the six steps in this guide.
Generating Leads Online: The Basics
Online B2B lead generation is the process of acquiring contact information about prospective customers on your website through various online marketing tactics, including social media, search, and digital ads. Unlike traditional lead generation, which involves using real-world assets like flyers and billboards, online lead generation is done entirely in the virtual realm. The goal is to interact with leads and convert them into customers.
Here are six steps to generate B2B leads online.
1. Understand Common Terminology
Here are some terms you will encounter on your virtual lead-generation journey. Understanding them will provide a solid foundation for your lead-gen activities.
Inbound marketing: Efforts that drive consumers to your website, such as posting on social media.
Outbound marketing: Tactics that push messages about your products and services to prospective buyers through platforms like LinkedIn Messages.
Account-based marketing: Tactics focused on a specific buyer segment using highly personalized messaging and offers.
Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): Leads that have engaged with your marketing, such as providing contact information to downloaded content.
Sales qualified leads (SQLs): Leads that align with your buyer personas, meaning they could easily become good customers. (SQLs are typically MQLs that have been vetted and moved over to the sales team).
2. Conduct Industry Research
Researching your industry is necessary because:
You must understand your prospective buyer’s needs and how your products or services can help them. Review consumer demographics, buyer behavior, intent, and client personas to do this.
It allows you to examine your competitors' activities, including their lead-generation marketing efforts and messaging.
It helps you determine which keywords to focus on, especially in content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and Google Ads.
Understanding all these things clearly will help you build sound lead-generation campaigns.
3. Optimize Your Website
Your website is central to your lead-generation efforts. It delivers information about your business to prospective buyers and encourages qualified people to offer their contact information.
Your website must be clear, convincing, and user-friendly. Here are some areas to focus on:
Use clear messaging
Make your calls to action visible and compelling
Ensure website pages load quickly
Use responsive design and make your website mobile first
Make sure your digital assets are accessible to everyone
Check that it’s optimized for search engines
Once you make your website the best it can be, you can drive traffic and generate leads.
4. Develop a B2B Lead Generation Marketing Strategy
Some common B2B marketing tactics that you could incorporate into your overall lead generation strategy include:
Content marketing
Organic and paid social media
Email marketing
Google Ads and digital advertising
What’s critical is to select marketing tactics your prospective business buyers will engage with. For example, lawyers selling legal services to other businesses may be successful in promoting leadership content that demonstrates their expertise on LinkedIn. A contractor offering in-demand services to organizations might be wise to focus on Google Ads so they’re found when people seek out their services.
5. Launch Your Campaigns
Once you’ve developed a plan, it’s time to execute it.
Depending on the tactics included in your marketing strategy, you must:
Write blogs
Develop premium assets, such as eBooks and white papers
Create ads
Develop emails
Set up marketing automation and flows
Set up social media accounts, create content, and post it consistently
No matter what tactics you choose, take the time to set up tracking in Google Analytics, on social media, and through your email provider to ensure you know where your leads are coming from and where they are not.
6. Review Results
Online lead generation isn’t once-and-done. It’s an ongoing process of optimization based on metrics.
Review your results to see how various aspects of your strategy are performing. This will help you determine what you can do better.
How are LinkedIn ads performing against benchmarks?
Are Google Ads bringing in enough quality leads?
Are people engaging with your content and website?
Once you assess your performance, you can improve or eliminate lead generation tactics that aren’t working and maximize those that are. Don’t give up if you’re unsure how to improve your campaigns. Contact the customer service reps available through most marketing platforms to get advice.
Online Lead Generation: The Final Word
Even if you’re new to B2B lead generation, you can achieve success by following the steps in this guide. Educate yourself on common lead generation terminology. Then, improve your website, conduct research, develop a marketing strategy, execute your plan, review your results, and optimize your campaigns. Doing so will help you generate the leads you need to operate your business profitably.
